


The Hellhound

by thebeastinsideusall



Series: Bucky Barnes Fics [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Claws, F/M, HORRIBLE TORTURE, Mutant OFC, Mutants, bad things, bear with me, bucky is protective, feral instincts, fngs, hydra are asshats, instintcs, werwolves, winter soldeir love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-09-11 03:44:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 18,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8952544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebeastinsideusall/pseuds/thebeastinsideusall
Summary: The Winter Soldier had a partner. One so secretive, that not even Nastasha knew of them. One he found on accident. It's his fault she's the way she is. His fault she's a monster. His entire fault. Now he's got to find her, help her become more than the animal they made her. He has to find Hellhound.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> No beta. Any and all mistakes are my own

June 25, 1954

"Werwolves? Seriously? They've got to be joking, they're a myth!" Suited guards walk quickly down a hallway, deep in the russian tundra and underground. Safe from Shield's prying eyes and super soldiers clad in red, white and blue. 

"That's what Zola said though! I swear. Said it's one of the last and the only one ever caught." They turned a corner down the halls hurring to their waypoint. "She's prolly some kind of mutant."

"But I mean, what's he going to do with it now that we've got it? Mind wipe?" One shrugs and they walk on. 

"Dunno, said he's got high hopes for it. So you know what that means.." He lets it trail off, they both know. There's one set of serum tubes left. It can't be replicated and now Zola has a new person to turn into a weapon. 

"The fallen commando isn't enough for him?" The one speaking shudders at the memory of being thrown across the room by that new cybernetic arm.

"Guess he wants more than one asset in case things ever go south."

"As long as they never turn on us, I don't really care." They finally stop at the group of gathered men surrounding not one but two cyro chambers. That wasn't part of the misson but by the looks of the commanding officers, it was now. 

Zola strolled in, the short man not giving one look at any of the heavily armed and trained guard around him. Simply walking over to wipe at the fogged up glass of the first cyro chamber. The face of a seething soldier frozen beneath the glass. Dark hair and bloodthirsty eyes glaring from their frozen state under the ice, jaw set in anger and hint of fear.

"This..." He taps on the glass lightly with his forefinger while looking around the room. "...is going to be our biggest asset, the Winter Soldier." His heavy accent playing with some of the sylables as he taps on the side of the chamber where the hydra symbol sat emblazened on the metal. Like fresh blood on steel. 

"He is highly dangerous when not given orders. And even more so when he has a mission, you are to keep him frozen until I give the say so. Understand?" All the guards nod their heads, some of them remembering the first time the solier was released from the chamber and killed half a dozen gaurds while his metal arm was still frozen stiff. 

"Your mission has been added onto, but nonetheless important." He strode over to the second chamber, wiping his hand over the glass to reveal a girl. What looked like blonde hair, maybe pulled back. But the lower half of her face covered in what some of the nearest guards could tell was the same mask/muzzle made for the soldier. Her eyes watering as if she had been crying and bright green eyes staring back into nothing that was in her vision anymore. 

"She is the newest asset. The serum worked on her, almost too perfectly with her genetic mutations. I know some of you believe my claim to be false, that she is a werewolf. Rest assured. Once you see what she can accomplish, with some incentive..." Some of the men stilled, knowing exactly what he meant, the same reason there was a bit of fear in the soldiers eyes. "I expect them to arrive on time, and still frozen. Understood?"

Zola vanished from the room with a grace the portly short man shouldn't be able to possess. The armed guards loaded up the two cyro chambers into the air ship, attaching them to the cooling pipes that would keep them frozen until the aircraft reached its destination. The two assets firmly stuck in their icy coffins, waiting to be released when Hydra saw fit to use them.   
It was only the bginning...


	2. Chapter 2

April 4, 1959

"Shoot her down she's not responding to commands!" Guards aimed weapons, sniper rifles, at the breathing body in front of them. A slip of a girl clothed in nothing more than a t-shirt and slim fitting pants as she dropped the severed hand from her grip. Crimson blood dripping from her digits. 

Her nails and fingers dripped with someone else blood as she snarled out at the guards closing in on her, several bullet wounds already healing in her left arm and right kneecap. Those shots should have been enough to drop any man, or woman, but she merely grunted and kept going. Her teeth savage looking as she bared sharp canines at the men surrounding her. She wasn't human, never had been. But now she was a beast, one refusing to bow down and bare her neck. 

"We can't contain her, someone call Zola! This bitch is nuts!" Her head swings around, blonde tendrils caked in fresh blood swinging from her ponytail as she snarls inhumanly at the man who spoke, effectively making the grown man step back just enough to lose any scrap of masculinity in him. 

The guards don't know what to do without further orders. This wasn't supposed to happen. The asset was working well until one of the men made a whispered crack at how docile she was being and then all hell broke loose. She had turned on everyone, her handler getting the brunt of the attack and left to bleed out in the dirt and rubble. Course he was stupid enough to approach her. 

Her mask had been snapped off and that left her teeth open to use as a weapon, something none of the men wanted to ever see again. Those canines were brutal. And they had tried to file them down before...they grew back in hours. She was nothing short of hell breaking loose on anything or anyone in her way. But that's why she was the hellhound wasn't it?

Her breathing ragged, those bright green eyes of hers glowing brighter, yellowing a bit as instincts flowed in from somewhere. They could tell, she needed another wipe. Too long out of the cyro chamber with little to no maintenence made it easier for memeories and thoughts to come back. She neded put down, or wiped. And they all knew Zola only wanted one outcome, start over in her head and recondition her again. 

Someone's radio buzzes, Zola heard their plea for help and is bringing the Soldier. He'll be able to take her down without much damage to the Hellhound so they can restart. She's backing away, eyes flashing to the open field behind her to the right, the line of trees. Her brain screaming at her to run but she can't, she wants to and can't. The commands, still ringing in her head. She wants to be free. She can't. Conditioning. Only a few years and she cant even speak without being spoken to. 

They close in, seeing what she's trying and failing to do and close in on her. Circling her until theres no space left for her to try to get away to the saftey of the woods. But far enough to not be in reach of claws and teeth and feet. Her flexibilty was outstanding in the sense she could hit you fast with a kick than with her fist. 

Soon Zola rode in on a jeep, the Soldier sitting on the back, metal arm gleaming in the low afternoon light as his own face covered in the trademark muzzle he himself was commanded to wear. Though he could pull it off if he wanted, but he couldn't. He couldn't make his own choices anymore. Not unless he was told to.

He jumped down, already being given his mission and knowing what to do. Calm the Hellhound and get her back to the bunker for a wipe and cyro time. In the back of his mind he hated, loathed himself. It was his fault she was here. But nothing he screamed in his head made his body stop it's motion towards the group of men surrounding the blood covered woman. 

Her eyes lit up, just for a moment, the yellow receding into the bright green of winter forests. He wouldn't, couldn't admit it, but he loved that color in her eyes. But all too soon it was gone, darkened by fear and overwhelming sadness as he reached out. Several yards away from her, palm facing up as his hand hovered at waist height. A command they had taught them both. She would respond to the Soldier.

Her shoulders sag, nearly dropping to her knees as her head bows slightly. She can't escape the silent command. It was the first thing branded into her memory and muscles. Obey the call, do not fight it, compliance will be rewarded. With a sigh her features softened a bit, canines fading, shrinking back into soft pink gums. Slowly she made her way over, no matter what the back of her mind said, she obeyed the call. For him. 

Dropping to her knees just in front of the Soldier. Like a dog trained to come and heel for its master, she complied. She held her hands behind her back, wrists crossed and head tilted back to bare her throat. Instantly guards replaced the muzzle on her mouth, tightening it to painful and she a tiny whimper silent to all, only the Soldier heard it. And inside he pittied the poor girl kneeling, being hog tied and cuffed and muzzled like a wild animal before him. 

They both loathed themselves on the inside. That they had given up so easily, given over basic rights any person had. But they weren't people, were thay? They were assets, weapons to be used and disposed of when theier usefullness ran their course. And they both knew it, somewhere in their muddled minds and fuzzy memories, they knew it. 

Zola watched with facination, every time the Hellhound went wild the Soldier seemed to be the only thing to calm her enough to comply again. Ideas formed into his mind and with a wicked grin he ordered her to the next wipe and then have both of them placed back in cyro, Red Skull needed to be informed of these new discoveries with Hyrda's best assets. His mind not even fazed by her recent handler, laying mangled and dead on the dirt with a missing hand and ripped out throat. All for the cause. His body was incenerated.


	3. Chapter 3

February 25, 1968

"I'm telling you, you have to watch out for it, one wrong move and you'll be it's dinner. I'm not kidding!" Armed men walk through halls, discussing their newest assignment, asset detail. Keeping watch over the newly frozen deadly duo as they were briefed and given orders. Handlers being chosen and orders being given. 

"I doubt that." Cocky, he didn't think they were all that tough, he was new. Oh and he was going to learn not to play with the hands of death .

"It's your funeral if you try anything with it, it'll tear your arm right off without blinking." The others warned him, told him to back off and just listen to orders. Their ranks always being filled because of cocky new kids wanting to be tough in front of their superiors. They were killed the fastest, and replaced just as quickly. 

Red Skull was dead, Zola still heading the scientific division of Hydra and keeping the assets contained until they're needed. Though his age was showing, slowing him down. He didn't care, soon a serum would be crafted to slow his aging, making him nearly immortal. He just had to get the DNA splicing down, needed more of the hellhounds blood to configure the right dosage. And wether it will work on non mutated cells. 

He would never thank the Winter Soldier for finding the biggest discovery Hydra has ever made. The man simply found her on accident while at the end of a mission. She was just there, engaged her in combat and then knocked her out. Hydra sources had seen the change, the way she turned into a feral animal when cornered. It was exhilarating how the Soldier hadn't killed her. That in itself was extraordinary. He had needed her, and he got what he wanted. 

Right now they had another mission, another target. This one having an immense amount of security even Hydra wasn't expecting. No matter, he'll just send in both of them and the job will be down faster than if he had just sent in the Soldier. They worked well together and the Hellhound still seemed to respond to the call if the Soldier was present. Something about him calmed her instincts, Zola wagered, and made her more docile and calm then if she was by herself and her handlers. Which she took out everytime the tried to call her back. 

The body count by that alone was starting to grow. 

She went through them just as quickly as the Soldier did. But no matter a few more wipes, more intense now that they had better technology, would make them more compliant in the future. Then again, they had been out of cyro for a long while now. Maybe it was time to retire them for a bit. Too much time in the outside world made them less likely to respond to orders. 

That's what he would do, wipe them again, oh how he loved to watch them scream and thrash in that chair and them freeze them again. With new chambers this time they could be in longer periods of time without the change of cooling fluids. It made for longer durations and less wiping on his end. It was such a tedious task to train, reprogram and wipe both of them at the same time. 

"For the love of god man, strap him down and wipe him!" Zola growled at the fidgeting scientists and lab technicians as the soldier heaved heavy breathes in the chair, head locked in place and mouth guard firmly set between his teeth to keep him from biting his own tongue off. They made that mistake with the Hellhound once and she really had bitten her tongue in half, thankfully she could grow it back but they weren't really concerned about it at all, she was muzzled anyways. 

James Barnes fought tooth and nail years ago, now he fidgeted and thrashed but mostly listened to orders. He had stopped fighting so much and Zola was grateful. An asset that could think on it's own was more dangerous than a compliant one. He still fought back, but he was so deep in his own mind that he couldn't do much anymore, beside the occasions where he threw a tech across the room or punched a hole in a guards chest for ordering him when they weren't his assigned handlers. 

After the wipe he was compliant, not saying a word, of course he wasn't programmed to. No choices to himself, he walked and did as asked, stepping into the cyro chamber without a fight and strapped in, metal arm slipping into a slot that latched on and even if he was defrosted too early, couldn't move from the chambers unless released. Just another way for them to keep tabs on their biggest asset. 

Hellhound was already in her chamber, muzzled and strapped in. She was a fighter whenever she emerged. Zola couldn't quite stop the strange instincts that formed and controlled her actions above the commands they give her. They couldn't shake her more feral side and though it was extremely useful when on a mission it was irritating to say the least once she got a taste of blood again. It was strangely beautiful, the way she flitted and flipped around a small army of men, taking out each one without a single weapon other than her own body. 

Tapping his hands, almost lovingly against the windows of the icy coffins, he smirked and strolled away, the lights dimming to black darkness as the door closes. Again the two are left in the darkness, in the freezing cold for however long Hydra sees fit. At least they shared in the comfort that they wouldn't be wiped or prodded or beat until the next time the were defrosted again. 

But the cold is a beast, stripping away every bit of warmth felt or perceived in the mind, awake in the frigid ice for what feel like eons. Time to think, you would assume. But the conditioning goes so deep, so thorough Hydra was at first in their training, that they can't even form a coherent through without being told otherwise.


	4. Chapter 4

November 17, 1993

She had been frozen for too long. Her body wouldn't warm up, wouldn't awake from the cold. No matter what they did to start her up again. They thought her too dangerous, less compliant than the Soldier so she stayed in the iced coffin , waiting and fading away. Her body nothing but bones beneath the constant strength anymore . 

Finally she woke up, screaming, forming incoherant bouts of russian and polish from her lips as she tried and failed to attack the guards assigned to her. More piled in, weapons raised, her new handlers issuing the commands she was trained to respond to. 

Slowly she came back to them, complying and sitting still, letting them poke and prod her. Checking vitals and filling her blood stream with steroids and muscle fillers to make her strong again, get her body moving and ready to be used for a mission. 

They threw her in cold icy showers, never letting her body truely get awrm. Too many times being frozen would do that to a body. Slow the aging process and make the vital organs weak form nonuse. Liquid diets kept her and the Soldier both starving and weak, even though thay were sent out on missions that could take days to accomplish, they weren't given the orders to eat. Just their missions and nothing else. It was degrading but who cared, they weren't poeple. 

Again the call wasn't listend to. She refused her handler and a guard opened fired the moment she didn't comply. It was his own fault, he should have waited for an order but the moment he shot through her left calf, she turned on them all. Killing all but two of the three dozen Hydra agents stationed with her. The new man in charge was called, the Soldier sent in, Zola's words ringing in his head. If the call is not complied, send in the   
Soldier, she will listen to him more than anyone else. She will comply to his call. 

So they sent him in, Hellhound was relatively calm but still refusing the call. Standing with her back against a brick alleyway in the abandoned streets of New Orleans. Her eyes daring anyone to come to her, she wasn't running but she wasn't going to come willingly. 

He's there, strutting somewhat into the alley, dark shadows fall over him. His large frame cloaked in the darkness, metal arm gleaming in the little light from a street lamp across the road. She senses him, her entire body turning toward him, stepping back into the corner of the dead end alley. She knows what he wants, refuses to accept it. Her mind coming back in slips from so long in the ice. 

His head tilts, knowing what she's feeling but unable to feel outside, to show anything anymore. His soul is gone, replaced by the Winter Soldier he's become. And he knows, he KNOWS, that she's not far behind him. So he does his mission, he calls her. Arm outsretched at waist height, palm facing up and tilt of the head. A command so embedded into her brain that she can't help it. 

A switch is flipped, bright green orbs dimming so much. Her body relaxs, no longer crouched into a fighting stance, she's walking over. Kneeling on the ground under the hand calling to her her. and again, she's muzzled and collared like the dog she is to them. Again she's caught, transported, and wiped again. this time she doesn't fight anymore. Let's the pain roll through her. No longer finding a spot in her memory to make her want to remember or fight anymore. She's gone. She's the Hellhound, and she's complacent finally.


	5. Chapter 5

Summer, 2014

Something was wrong, why did he know who his mission was? Why did he want to stop, to not kill this man in the red, white and blue uniform. Something in him snapped as the man had pulled the heavy iron beam off of him, helped him. No one helped him for the sake of it. It was always a trick, a ploy to make him comply to their needs. 

This man, seeing his face, hearing him call him...Bucky? It snapped something in his brain and the Soldier hated it. If he started to think, to ask about this, they'd wipe him again, torture him until he gave information he didn't know he had stored inside his mind.   
Something about that face, that voice. Made him think of a town, a city, a place of warmth, of... A feeling he didn't know how to describe was creeping up in him. Words jumbled as he stalked through woods, his handler would find him. Wait did he have a handler, they had assigned one but didn't give him specifics on a pick up point. 

He kept going, wanting to get as far away from the man he saved and left on the shore. He couldn't look at his face. He thought of his features, his eyes and his head exploded into pain from the force of the conditioning. He didn't know anyone. He didn't remember anyone save for the Hellhound. He knew she was like him, that he wasn't given orders to fight her, only if found he was to call her, and bring her back with him to their handlers. 

Stumbling through brush and trees, unfamilar terrian. Slumped against a tree to catch his breath as he waited for any sign of someone following him, he waits. 

And waits..

Waits...

Slowly james remmebers exactly what his mission was, remembers that somewhere he knew how that man he fought was. he just couldnt rememebr his name, or why he was familar. he wasnt a handler, he was a mission. one that the solider had failed. and he waited for a handler, for an agent to collect him, take him back, wipe him again for another mission. Punish him for the failed mission .   
But they never come.


	6. Chapter 6

Fall, 2014

More things come back, fuzzy images and fragments of things. The little kid from Brooklynn, his home, his siblings...sisters maybe?... Steve... Steve...his friend?... Pain, horrible pain... Seering white hot stabs in his head. 

He steals clothes, hoodies to hide his metal arm, ballcaps to hide his face, jeans to cover the suit that he can't bring himselt to take off. Because no one ordered it... He's waiting for orders. 

They should have come for him by now. But now he remembers tiny things, the handlers, the men in black suits, armed and pointing weapons at him to listen to orders. They are the ones who hurt him so many times, the reason he flinches when there's a loud noise close to where he sleep in alleyways, or shouting coming from no where. 

He can't go back now, he's remembered too much. What little he has. He knows at least, that they'll put him in so much misery that he'll never wake up from the cold again. 

The cold, he can't go back to that. The terrifying darkness that comes after being forcibly frozen in ice for years or decades at a time. 

No! No more cold! 

He shivers under layers hoodies and coats from already dead homeless men. He can't get warm, they took the heat from his body, his soul, forever. He waits for his death to come, they'll find him soon enough, they always do. 

So he waits, and waits, and freezes under layers of clothing that don't keep out the chill of the air even though it's the hottest time of the year. And he hides, somewhere deep in his mind he knows they'll kill him now, he's too far gone. He's useless now. They'll dispose of him if they find him. 


	7. Chapter 7

Winter, 2014 

Steve, he needs to find Steve. He doesn't know how. 

He remembers, dates he set up for the little guy. How he'd skip out and try to join the army. They always turned him down.

He remembers the sense of relief when they refused to let Steve in. One more time that he can keep his friend, his brother safe. 

He needs to find Steve. He needs to hide from Hydra, they've tried to look for him. Small contingents of agents, armed and ready to kill. He's eluded them for weeks now. But he can only run so far when he's in streets he doesn't know. 

Steve where are you, punk. I need you... I'm sorry...

Loathing washes over him as he searches and tracks Captian's movements, places he's spotted and people he might be with to no avail. He's Hydra's best assassin and tracker, it shouldn't be this hard to find a man clothed in a suit that an american flag threw up. 

He looks up at Stark Tower. The tallest building in New York. The most heavily guarded, even he couldn't get in without some outside help. He couldn't risk it. But maybe...just maybe? No, he couldn't make a scene. He needed to find Steve on his own. If Hydra caught him again... He'd be gone again.

So he waits, a few blocks away. Staring at his exhibit at the Smithsonian. His face, a face he knows is his but he can't remember that life much. Just the bits with Steve in them. Steve's face always coming out of the fog and making him WANT to remember, to piece his life back together. 

There were moments where he would wake and sit stock still for hours, waiting to be wiped or told orders. And he'd just sort of faze out and realize he hadn't moved in ten hours. He hated what they turned him into. The conditioning so deep he couldn't fight it. Just barely kept it at bay. 

If an agent found him, a few words and he'd be gone again, James Barnes gone and the Winter Soldier all that is left in the shell that was once Bucky. 

And what about her? The woman called the Hellhound. She had been their pawn too. He couldn't save her until he got himself under control. She could already be disposed of. How would they control her if she resisted the call? He didn't know. 

The last time, he remembered, her being awake they had to call him in to make her comply. He didn't know the date or time or place. Only that she would respond to him and only him willingly. He hated himself for it. He should have freed her. Let her go and be damned with the pain he would receive for it. But he couldn't.

Plenty of times he could have set her free and he MADE her come back to the hell that was their lives. Self hate ate at him as more memories were unlocked...

He needed to find Steve. Get his head on straight. Decondition or whatever to make him think on his own. He couldn't leave her in the low pit of hell to be used anymore. 


	8. Chapter 8

Late winter, 2014

Steve found him in early spring. Walking right by him. He didn't look closely at the homeless man he gave a wadd of bills to. Not until the man looked up. they both froze and the world stopped spinning for an eon as they realzing in shock who the other was. 

The Captain dropped to his knees in front of James, his hands hovering over Barnes' shoulders before slapping them down gently and smiling so bright it would put the sun to shame on its brightest day. 

Bucky stood, throwing his arms around Steve. He had almost given up hope on finding his friend. More and more came back to him as the time had passed. He loved this man, he was his brother by more than blood could show. And Steve had found him by accident. Not even supposed to be back in the city, but wanted to look at the Smithsonian exhibit again. Look at the pictures of who his friend used to be. 

This was better, finding him on the street across from the musuem. Gritty and filthy but alive, and coherent and able to speak, a bit, for himself. He was thin, too thin, even under all the layers Steve could tell he was malnourished and pale. He needed medical help, quickly. 


	9. Chapter 9

February 10, 2015

"Steve I'm telling you I have to find her! She's been with them as long as I have and I can't leave her there!" Bucky shouted across the conference room in Stark towers. He was recovering, coming back to himself bit by bit, Steve filling in the blanks where he could.

"I understand that Bucky, but we don't even know where to start looking. She could be anywhere, or frozen and stored away. Or even.." He didn't finish that statement, because the look of misery and self loathing pouring off of his friend had him keeping his mouth shut.

"I don't care, we start looking for her now. I'm fine to go on..missions now." He had a hard time saying certain words associated with the commands he used to receive. Fearing they may trigger something in his brain and make him go into Soldier mode. 

"Buck...look at yourself, you're doing great, getting healthy again, but...I can't let you go into a Hyrda base...not if they can somehow take you away from me again... I won't let that happen.." Steve fought back, trying to hard to let his friend down. They had the resources to find her yes. But he couldn't let Bucky back into the fight, not if he could be lost again. 

"She won't respond to you, she'll kill you, or at least try Steve.." Steve nodded, Bucky had told him the things he could remember about her fighting style. More like her abilities. She was a wild animal. Deadly to even be within a mile radius of, quick and agile, flexible and silent as the grave. Instincts to match a wolf or worse. 

But he hadn't seen or heard about her in his entire life. She was kept just as secret as Bucky had been. Natasha couldn't find much intel on her. Paper trails went cold after the war era. Only finding a thin folder after finding Bucky's thick volume at an abandoned Hydra base. 

It had three things in the entire folder. A picture of the girl, frozen behind glass, muzzled and eyes seething in rage. A short report on her assumed abilities and healing properties in her blood and notes on how she reverted to her 'instincts' when threatened. And a second picture, of her standing in a suit nearly identical to the one Bucky now kept hidden under his mattress and out of sight. Her hair stained with dripping blood, hands and forearms covered with it. Her muzzle firmly in place to hide what Steve assumed were her teeth and canines. And a mountain of bodies surrounding her... . 

"We'll find her, but you need to get better..." Steve was adamant about Bucky getting his head screwed on right. But they both know that was a lost cause. He was Bucky again, but he'd never be that Bucky ever again. The one before Hydra found him laying in his own blood in snow and near dead at the bottom of a ravine. 

"Fine...but you TELL me if you catch wind of her...she may turn on anyone else...I...I know her, she always listened to the call when I gave it.." Steve could FEEL the hatred flowing off Bucky. He stood and clapped his hand over Bucky's right shoulder, squeezing it lightly. 

Bucky had told him of the times he remembered being told to bring her back in. How she stopped fighting after awhile and how he hated being the reason she couldn't be free right now. Living a life without someone controlling every step and move you make, every word from your mouth. 

"I will, I promise...I'll have Natasha double her efforts, maybe call in some favors...and I'll ask Tony of he can do something..." He walked out of the conference room, leaving Bucky to look at the thin folder in front of him. 

She was so young, maybe 19 when he had stumbled across her in a mission. She didn't die when he punched her across the temple, merely groaned and passed out. That was his mistake...not killing her then. He should have. She would have been spared all the pain and torture Hydra did to her. 

His fist connected with the wall behind him, metal hand still at his side. He wanted to feel the pain from the plaster and concrete breaking under his flesh hand. He couldn't sit idly by and let her suffer anymore. 

His fault, always his fault. 

He shouldn't have given up on the train, held on a little longer. 

Then he wouldn't have fallen.

Wouldn't have Hydra find him.

Wouldn't be beat into submission from pain and exhaustion.

Wouldn't have become a literal killing machine.

Wouldn't have found the poor girl hiding in the woods because of what she was.

Wouldn't have let her live through this hell as long as they had...

He had to find her, repent for his sins.

Somewhere...there was a god that was laughing at him for trying after all the blood he had shed. 

But he was going to try...

Hell would be a relief after what he'd been through.


	10. Chapter 10

April 5, 2015

 

They found her. 

Natasha actually running across her while rifling through an abandoned compound in southern Russia. She was feral, literally. Living amongst a pack of too large rabid wolves in the winderness. 

She'd been left, forgotten. The cryo chamber having no power had shut down and when she was defrosted no one was there to give her orders or command her. She simply went wild. The inside of the pod clawed and covered with old blood. She had clawed her way out of the steel chamber. 

They called Bucky and Steve, trying to explain how bad off she was and how they didn't understand how a human could live like this for so long, hell they didn't know how long she'd been out of confinement.

They rushed, the aircraft couldn't carry them fast enough to Russia. Neither Captain nor Bucky sleeping a bit. Chewing on nails and fidgiting until the plane landed a mile south of the facility. 

He runs through the woods, over logs and stumps and deer trails. Boots stomping throught the tall grass. Slowing down when he finds Natasha crouched low behind a thick tree, finger covering her mouth to be silent as Bucky and Steve crouch down. Following her line of sight to the valley below them. She's sitting on a raised rock. Black fitted suit hanging off of her shoulders in tatters, ripped at her thighs leaving her legs bare. 

She was chewing, no gnawing, on a bone, snarling out at any of the wild wolves that got too close to her meal. They actually backed off, ears flat against furr as they stalked off to find their own meal. Her hair matted and twisted into natural dreadlocks full of leaves and dirt. 

Face covered and smeared in dirt and mud, nails caked with it and feet bare. Looking a tiny bit blue, she was freezing and didn't even realize it. Bucky knew that feeling, he still couldn't tell the difference in the temperature around him, it was always cold. Never able to be warm. 

Steve grabbed his arm, not wanting Bucky to go in alone. But he had to. Rogers could be injured and it would be James' fault. There was enough guilt on his newly revealed conscious, he didn't need any more of his friend's blood on his hands. 

Slowly he made his way down into the valley. Booted feet making soft crunching noises that alerted the wolves of his presence. Making them snarl and surround the pups that were playing to the north in the clearing. His eyes stayed trained on the girl. Watching as her own face growled, lips peeling back to elicit a deep snarl from her thin throat at the threat coming toward them. 

She slipped off the rock she had been sitting on, legs and torso moving lithly to crouch into a low fighting stance. Instantly on the defenseive. His heart cracked again seeing her so lost in her own mind. She hadn't recognized him yet. It wasn't her fault. He had cut his hair, shaved. He looked thicker, bulkier. And the black suit he was known for was gone. Replaced by dark jeans and tactical vest over a dark shirt. 

He kept easing into the clearing. Paying no mind to the snapping wolves around him, except that they were huge. Standing at least to his waist and thick with muscle and sinew. In the back of his mind he wanted to know more about them, but he kept his task clear. She was watching him, her head tilted and no longer baring forboding canines at him. 

He stopped. Yards from her and there were two ways to do this. He could give the call, MAKE her come back to him and maybe help her out. Or he could wait her out, see if she could make it back on her own. But he doubted the later, even he didn't know her name, no one did. Hydra never made an effort to find out. They simply stripped whoever this girl was to leave nothing but the wild animal before James. 

He knelt, becoming eye level with most of the wolves but more to her. He wasn't going to command her like she had been for so long. Couldn't bring himself to even consider it. It was cruel, what they had went through. But she was a girl, a tiny thin girl who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time and now here they were. 70 years later and he's trying to right the wrongs he's done to her. 

She relaxes more and more, standing up a bit from her crouch and taking a few steps toward him. He didn't move, she could take it as a threat and bolt, or worse try to go after him. He waited, keeping his large frame from looking imposing, but that was a bit hard when you looked like you were jacked full of sterioids on a daily basis. But she crept closer, and he couldn't stop the tiny smile of hope twitching on his lips.

Steve and Natasha watched with baited breath. Both wary of the wild girl making her way towards Bucky. Natasha had grabbed hold of Steve the moment Bucky had knelt down. Opening himself up for attack. Steve needed to be down there, helping his friend and he was anxious watching from so far away. It was tearing him up inside that Bucky was out in the open as well, Hydra could be anywhere. He needed to get Bucky back to the tower as fast as he could. It was safe there. 

He watched as Bucky stood still, waiting as she crept to just a few feet from his reach. He could grab her, easily, if he wanted to. But the look of fear crossing over the girl's face had the Soldier keeping his stance relaxed, non threatening. She dropped to her knees in front of him, tilting her head as she looked into his eyes. Steve was pulling on Natasha's hold on him, wanting to go down there and be near Bucky. 

For a moment the world stopped, James could see the light flick on in her eyes as the deep yellow receded into a dull verison of her once bright green eyes. It was like she was coming back to herself, realizing who was in front of her. Her hand outstretched, fingers and palm trembling as her fingertips reached and touched over his clean shaven jaw.

'Yavlyayutsya.....obrabotchik?' (are ..hand...handler?) She spoke in broken Russian, her voice soft, throaty, cracked. As if she hadn't used her voice in a very long time. She hadn't though, most likely years since her last outburst. And it broke Bucky's heart all over again to see her so confused. Needing orders and commands to make her feel like the world wasn't coming apart at the seems. 

He shook his head slightly, noting the wolves had dispersed and cleared out of the valley. But his gaze stayed on her. "Teper' ty v bezopasnosti malo volka, ya obeshchayu" (you're safe now little wolf, i promise). His own deep voice rasping a bit from the nervousness flowing through him. She looked shocked at the words, and suddenly flinched to the side, her right arm coming up to shield her face as if she expected to be hit for speaking out. 

"Eto normal'no, ya ne sobirayus' delat' tebe bol'no, obeshchayu" (its okay, im not going to hurt you, i promise). He soothed, speaking softly so he wouldn't startle her anymore. She took a minute to stop cowering in her sheilded position and looked up through sleep deprived eyes and shaggy hair. 

"Zima?" (w...winter?) She had never known what to call him, she couldn't make the words come out from his entire title, couldn't remember how to put the letters and speak it out anymore. She crept closer, touching his face again before throwing her arms around his shoulders. Silently letting tears flow from her eyes as she nuzzled into his neck. The familiar scent of him calming her further. 

Bucky picked her up, signaling for Steve and Natasha to come down as he pulled his metal arm underneath her knees and pulled her against his chest. This was most likely the only contact she had in decades that didn't result in her being beaten or tortured. And he sneered at the thought of anyone ever touching her again. And she just wept into his neck, unable to stop the flow of tears or the sobs that racked her chest and shoulders.

Steve and Black Widow came closer. Pity on their faces as they see how truely bad she is. Her entire body is nothing but skin stretched over bones. Cheeks, shoulders and hips gaunt, barely any muscle mass on her legs and arms. Her hair dull and limp hanging from her skull. Any part of exposed skin is fithly and bloody, covered in scrapes, cuts, wounds and slashes. They met the eyes of Bucky and each nodded before making their way back up the hill and toward the quinjet. 

She had stopped crying, clinging onto James neck like her lifeline. But as her eyes landed on the plane she froze up and started struggling. Muttering and crying in broken Russian to let her go, no more chair, no more COLD. 

Bucky held fast, keeping her caged in his arms as he whispered the same thing over and over in her ear. That she's safe, no more cold, it's alright. She didn't respond right away, it took the extra voice of Natasha speaking the same things across the way, before she quieted down enough to be pulled into the plane and strapped into a seat beside Bucky. 

He held her hand, she was scared to death of a reprimand. Every light flashing jolted her. Every loud noice or bang made her gasp and grab at the buckles around her shoulders and stomach. Finally she passed out from exhaustion and fatigue. Her body giving out from under her as Bucky ran his fingers over her frail hand. 

"We have to help her..." He looked up at Steve, his eyes full of misery and Steve couldn't help but flinch at the intensity of Bucky's eyes. 

"We will Buck, we will."


	11. Chapter 11

April 7, 2015

"Bucky..." They stared at the thick glass sperating them from the girl. Caged in the cell meant for Loki or Hulk. The glass at least a foot thick and tiny scratches appearing on the other side where the Hellhound was attacking it, trying to get to Steve and Bucky on the other side. The Soldier was hunched over in a chair, watching her beat herself into exhaustion and then keep going. She wasn't getting anywhere and they all knew it. 

Shortly after they had landed two days ago she woke up, and she was the Hellhound again. They expected that, readying themselves in case she turned on them. What they didn't expect was one look at the Captian and she went crazy, ripping at Bucky's metal arm and throwing blind punches. Her whispered muttering turned in coherant words. Mission, must finish mission. 

Natasha was the one to say it, she must have been programmed just before being put in the ice. Her mission the same as Bucky's. But bucky knew Steve. She didn't. Their wasn't any connection to him in her fragmented mind. The only thing she repsonded to was Bucky and even then it didn't work every time. New surrounding. New people. She didn't know how to react. Either she feared of being punished or she lashed out in anger from being so confused about her predicament. 

"I know Steve...was I...was I this bad? Coming out of it?" Steve took a long breath, leaning forward and nodding slightly at his friend.

"You had time free from anyone to come back to yourself... You were... You..when I found you. At least mostly there. She's...she's worse. What did they do to her?" Steve asked softly, his voice trailing off as she finally slumps over in exhuastion, her chest rapidly moving and her hands clutching at her chest and throat as if she dying of thirst. Her nails red and bloody from clawing at the glass. 

"The same shit they put me through, maybe worse..I ..I didn't get to see everything. I was only given tasks to bring her back in without injury whenever she went awol... Which happened a lot..." Bucky watched as she calmed enough to shake her head, gripping at her temples and shouting behind the glass in russian or english? He couldn't tell, just that she was starting to get over her programming a bit, maybe. "There's some parts that are fuzzy, but I know I trained her, I trained her hard..."

"How did you come back to yourself? I mean...you were in that same position. How did you regain your memories?" Steve asked, turning from the cell and looking at Bucky's hunched over frame, swallowing the metal folding chair beneath his large frame. 

"You, I remembered your face and then it started to come back, flashes and images all muddled together. But that's the problem with her Steve. I'm pretty sure she didn't have anyone to fight for. You brought me back, at least to what I am right now. Fighting by your side." He gestured to where the girl was now huddled into the back of the cell, thin arms wrapped around her knees as she stared at nothing in front of her, spacing out. 

"She was alone, in the woods when I ran into her. Making my way back to my handlers... I was ordered to kill anyone in my path. She didn't die when I punched her in the head Steve, she survived that hit from a cybernetic arm able to punch a hole through solid concrete..." Steve's head whipped around to the tiny bundle of dirty blonde hair and thin limbs. The thought of the girl taking that kind of hit...and living? Even he, super soldier, could just even out with Bucky's strength, and he had training. 

"I should have killed her Steve... I should have just snapped her neck and maybe...maybe she wouldn't be reduced to...this..." He gestured not only to her but to himself. He was a wreck, an absolute wreck, his mind in bits and pieces, still waking up and ready to be given orders. Shying away from high backed chairs and even stearing clear of the medical labs and tech floors of the tower. Nothing but a shadow of who he used to be, and can never be again. 

"No Buck, you can save her now. Look at her, she'll come around like you did, I just know it." Steve didn't voice his real opinon, that she may very well be a lost cause and that they may have to put her down if she couldn't be righted. She was dangerous beyond believe even in her much weaker form now. He could only imgine how strong and fast she would be at full health. He didn't say it , but Bucky knew it was a possibility, one he wouldn't accept until everything had been tried at least twice. 

"That's the problem Steve, she doesn't have anything to give her hope through the cold and programming. I had you, somewhere in my mind I always had you, making me fight as long and as hard as could. She doesn't have any hope left, and they knew that." His metal hand gripping into a fist and trembling slightly with the pent of power behind it, he wanted to hit something, anything. Destroy and kill anything set in front of him. 

Cap shook his head, kneeling on one knee in front of Bucky's darkened face. The face of the Winter Soldier he fought. But Bucky's eyes were there, shining bright and lucid. Steve clapped his hand over Bucky's left shoulder, nothing the hard icy surface of the metal plates under the layers of t-shirts and hoodie. 

"Become her hope Bucky, she needs you. You're the only one she even remotely responds to. Work with her. You can do this.." Steve stood and patted Bucky's shoulder, moving over to the raised screen of controls for the cell. Waiting for Bucky to rise and head into the outer locked doors. 

"I hope you're right about this Stevie..." Bucky tried to smile, it didn't reach his eyes. It looked strange on this face and Steve's heart wrenched at the sight of it. He ignored it though, tapping in the code to release the outer door and Bucky stepped in.

"Till the end of the line.." Steve responded and then the doors sealed. Steve waited for the nod from Bucky before cycling the inner locked doors of glass and waited with baited breath as the girl looked up and nearly clawed up the glass wall to get away from the man that walked into her cell. With a touch of his hand Steve locked the inner doors and waited. 

This had happened once before and she went beserk. There was nothing in the cell save for the air they could breath and their selves. And Steve watched as Bucky sat in front of the doors, legs folding beneath him as he kept his hands loose and leaning on his elbows. Both waiting for the girl to calm herself down enough to realize that Bucky wasn't going to hurt her. 

Soft footsteps sounding behind Steve and he tilted his head slightly to look at the red headed woman now standing beside his left, her own eyes watching the scene before them both. She stayed silent and Steve took the moment to turn his eyes back to the cell. The girl had calmed quite a bit, still breathing hard. Her body on its last bit of strength as she sat, slumped against the oppisite wall and watched Barnes like a weak animal backed into a corner. 

"Find anything?" Steve asked Natasha as the woman leaned a bit on the control panel and turned to face the Captian. Her shoulders sagged a bit, signaling to the Captain it wasn't good whatever she did find. Natasha nodded and pulled a very thick, old binder from her side bag. Holding it in one hand and reaching out to pull another tome from the bag at her side. 

"It's not pretty Rogers...not pretty at all..." She held both folders in front of her and shook her head looking at the stamped russian words on top of the first one. "I found hers, as well as Barnes'..."

"What? I thought you gave me Bucky's already?" Surprise written all over Steve's face as he glanced at the cell, neither person had moved and it was a stare down at who would cave first, so he looked back at Natasha. 

"I found another one...the orginal..." Her eyes said it all, the one she had given Steve all those months ago had been awful. But it was considerably thinner than the one she now held in her hands. 

"You're telling me that wasn't all of it? That's theres more?" She only nodded and handed them both over, her usually cool facade broken into one of disgust and pity at the offedning folders. Her hands jerking away as if they were burning her skin from their repulsive information.

"That's both of theirs, both orginals. Telling about their missions together...training...conditioning methods..." Her voice dripped with venom, her own experiences of conditioning making her angry that other people had to go through this kind of life. 

"Captain?" She looked up at Steve, her eyes burning with hatred not at himself but at the men who had done this. "Don't let Barnes give up on her. He may be the only one who can get her to be... more than what they made her." She turned on her heel and stalked away, footsteps softly vanishing down the corridors of Stark tower. 

Steve couldn't bring himself to look at the files. He couldn't take it. The weight of them felt like a hundred metric tons compared to the maybe ten pounds that they really were. He'd wait for Bucky, maybe he'd like to wait... Looking back at the cell he nearly dropped the files at the sight of them. From the thick glass he couldn't hear anything from inside while he had been talking to Black Widow but now he turned the speakers on so he could hear what they were saying. 

Both Bucky and the girl had moved closer. A yard or so between them, still sitting cross legged on the floor but now his head was hanging slightly and she looked ready to burst into tears. Her teeth gnawing into her nails as she watched and spoke back and forth with Bucky.

"Net, ty oshibayesh'sya... eto neverno..." (no youre wrong. ...thats wrong...). She whispered and Bucky only nodded his head and this time she did burst into tears. 

"Ya khochu eto bylo ne tak, 2015. my byli v led slishkom dolgo, i oni otvechayut skazali nam, chto eto bylo god..." (I wish it weren't true, but its 2015. we were in the ice for so long and the never told us the year it was...). His head looked up and Bucky tensed, he wanted to comfort her somehow but didn't know how to.   
She covered her face with her hands and shook her head, refusing to accept the length of time. She should be dead! No one lived this long and stayed this young. 

"Net, Net!" ( no..NO!). She cried into her hands and Bucky let her, his head dropping to look at his lap, letting her calm down before he went on. It was a rare time she was lucid enough to even respond back to him so he was taking the advantage he could. 

"Ty pomnish' menya?" (do you remember me?). He wanted to know, if she could remember some part of him. Maybe she could start to remember other things. She looked up a bit, nodding through wiping her hands over her eyes. 

"Da, vy...mne pozvonil" (yes, you Called to me..). Bucky nodded back at her, anything she could pull from her muddled thoughts was an improvement. 

"Chto-nibud' yeshche? Vy znayete, vashe imya?" (anything else? do you know your name?). He pressed on, trying desperately, grasping at straws to help her. She tensed and shook her head quickly. 

"Net... ya izverg... pravo?" (no...im...hellhound...right?). She was getting confused again, thinking her codename was her actual birth given name. Bucky sighed and shook his head as she looked at him as if he had two heads. Her hands reaching up to rub at her forehead and a soft whinper coming from her throat as she started to lean forward.

She slumped forward after a moment, seeing she wasn't going to catch herself Bucky reached out and slid across the floor to catch her before her head hit the hard floor and caused her further injury. Cradling her against his chest, Bucky stood and looked out the glass to Steve, wanting him to open the doors. 

Bucky couldn't help but notice how TINY she was in his arms. How her shoulders and hips were little more than joints or hard bone and pale sullen skin. Or how her breathing was shallow and ragged, her lungs sounding full of fluid. Bucky held her tighter to his chest. She was fading and too weak for the serum or her abilities to help her. 

Cap cycled both sets of doors, grabbing the files and following Bucky as they took her down the elevator and into the med bay. Stark and Banner looked up from their shared workspace and both froze for a moment at the limb bundle in Bucky's arms. It took them a moment and they were both in action. Clearing off a med table covered in paperwork and motioning for Bucky to lay her down on it. 

They all knew she was in bad shape, her body eating its own muscle mass to stay alive. She had been without proper nutrition or fluids for years now. It was taking a toll on her body, serum or not she was extremely weak and Bucky was desperate to fix it. 

"This should have been done when you brought her in..." Dr.Banner quipped as he readied an iv and prodded at her arm to find a vein. He didn't look up as Bucky watched from the sidelines, nervousness clear on his features as he looked around him almost skidishly. 

"She wasn't exaclty, you know, in her head when we brought her here." Steve ushered Bucky over some more so he stood out of the way as Stark asked Jarvis for a full body scan and x-rays of her internal organs. Muttering something about blood samples to make sure they didn't need a special blend like Cap and Bucky needed. 

Because of the serum that was pushed into both Bucky and Steve's bodies, they needed a special blend of antibiodics, pain killers and the like. Bucky had thought, maybe she had been injected with it, but he wasn't for sure. So none of them knew if the girl actually had it running through her own system. But with how Bucky remembered Zola? He wouldn't put it past the bastard to inject the poor girl full of what was left.   
Stark and Banner both look over the hologram screen projected in front of them. Both of their faces drawing tight at the look of her virtals, the low blood cel count, how her heart was barely pumping in her chest. Tony ran his hands over his face, motioning for Bucky and Steve to come over so Banner could explain what was going wrong. 

"Her organs are failing from unuse and her blood is just barely flowing. We need a blood transfusion as fast as possible and multiple iv to get her on her feet again.." Banner looked over at the girl who was shallowly breathing on the lab table.

"If i may Sir, " JARVIS interupted in his soft voice, " I've found that her blood does in fact carry trace amounts of the serum. And i've compiled a list of drugs to sedate her and get the young lady back on her feet."

"Thanks J," Tony spoke up after a moment and the two got to work, having Bucky move her onto a softer place to lay as the iv and anitbiodics started to drip into her through the tubes and needle. 

The four of the men stood in silence as they looked over at her shallow breathing. Noticing the now sllightly deeper breaths , less of a rasping sound, as she tried to breath in her unconcious state. Her eyes frantically moving behind closed lids in a nightmare that none of them could take her out of for now. 

Bucky walked over to the hospital like bed and leaned over it, hands placed and gripping onto the rails on either side of her body. His shoulders hunched with the weight of regret and anger hounding down on him as he watched her lay there. His mind reeling from the new information. But it wasn't new was it? He had known, somewhere in his mind, he had known that Zola had used the last bit of serum on her. 

She wouldn't age, at least not normally. She would heal quickly, if she was healthy to begin with. Looking at her now, he wasn't so sure the serum would work through this level of body degradation. The amount of strength behind the simplest actions would have to be toned down. Even picking up a pen could be snapped in pieces of grabbed to hard or quickly. 

"We'll get her through this, well get you through this Buck, I promise." Steve's voice spoke from somewhere behind him, but sounded a million miles away. 

"And do what? Make us normal? Don't you see Steve? We're never going to be normal after this. There is no such thing as normal for things like us.." Steve's hand clasped gently over Bucky's left shoulder. 

"You're not a thing, neither of you are. You're people who got taken advantage of in the most evil way i can think of." Bucky didn't believe the words . Couldn't believe them yet. It was too soon. The thought of Hydra busting in and taking him back more probable then actually being free in his mind. 

Deciding to go over the subject and ignore any other tries at making their points, "She can't wake up in here. It will trigger her like it did me. Not too comfortable in labs.." Nodding in agreement and mostly because he didn't want another episode resulting in his lab being utterly destroyed, Stark and Banner both attached everything to the gurney and told Bucky and Steve to take her to one of the secured rooms in the next floor down. Bucky's was down there too.


	12. Chapter 12

He watched over her. Long after Steve had left, telling him to get some rest and something to eat. Bucky hadn't moved from his spot on the chair beside her. Refusing to look at her and refusing to leave her side at the same time. His mind a mess of everything and nothing at the same moment. 

Little flashes would come to him sometimes. Visions of her face during training maybe. Or the blood trailing down his metal hand from inflicting injury. The body numbing pain of the mind wipe chair. Snippets of Steve's face, less muscular and a lot smaller than the man he knew as Steve today. And the train. The train kept coming back to him. The feeling of falling for so long. Of not dying a the bottom of the ravine. Yeah, his mind wasn't a happy place to be at the moment. 

A murmuring was infiltrating his thoughts. Mumbles in russian and it took him a moment to realize it wasn't in his mind. The voice was coming from her lips. His head shot up and he leaned over the bed slightly, watching her murmur in her half sleep as she tried to wake up. It was too soon, she shouldn't have woke up yet. Maybe the next day but not just hours after falling unconcious with the amount of drugs pumped into her to KEEP her down for the count. 

Her hands gripped at the sheets pooled around her. He didn't grab for her, that was the worse thing he could do right now. Forcing her into another episode so soon after her last could further damage what little to nonexistant progress he was trying to make with her. 

"Shhhh, little wolf..." Her eyes fluttered open slightly before the heavy lids closed again from the low lights in the room. She kept struggling as much as she could, trying to move away from his voice. He tried again, calling her the pet name his other self had given her years ago and still she didn't repsond. 

She acted like she didn't understand what he was saying. She knew her names, at least the one Hydra had given her and the one he had always named her. But she wasn't responding this time. It was strange. 

"Easy doll, you're gonna hurt yourself.." She was tugging weakly at the tubes attached to the iv's. He knew where her mind was going, thinking that they had her again and were trying to wipe her. His heart broke at the thought of her still thinking Hydra controlled her. He reached out with his left hand, gripping her wrist loosely, trying desperately not to break the bones in his grip. 

She stilled but only because the cool metal registered in her mid instead of a gloved hand or warm flesh. Her eyes shot open and she stared at him for a long moments, her eyes turning a bit glassy. He couldn't let her revert so quickly. 

"Hey, hey don't leave me yet, stay with me." He spoke again, soft and low so he wouldn't startle her and slowly her eyes became more focused again. She stopped trying to pull her wrist from his loose grip. Just locked her green eyes onto his blue ones and stared at him. 

She tried to speak, coughing as she tried to form words, her free wrist cradling her throat before trying again. "Ne prinyat' menya orbratno." (dont take me back). Her voice was strained, rasping and low. He would never dream of it. Even if Hydra did somehow find him and revert him back. He would fight it. 

"They will never find you here." he released her wrist, soothing the tender flesh and setting it back down onto the sheets as she continued to stare at him. Like his words didn't mean anything to her. Then it dawned on him, she doesn't understand what i'm saying. She didn't speak a word of english or understand it. He had forgotten. 

Growling at his own stupidity, Bucky changed tactics. Not thinking that it was her native tongue and she most likely had never left the country before Hydra took her. Russian was his second language. Hell it came out easier than english did for him most times. He spent so long with the orginal head of Hydra that he rarely used his birth language anymore. 

"Malen'kiy volk.." (little wolf) "..ty v bezopasnosti so mnoy.." (you're safe with me). He watched as she glanced around, waiting and tensing for the guards to come in and strap her down, or rip him away from her like thay always did when he brought her back. She started to shiver as the tension coiled thickly in her tiny frail body. 

Bucky didn't fix his mistake, he had meant to say here and not with him. But the response came out and he couldn't, wouldn't take it back. Either way, he meant it. She was safe with him. They were in the most protected and heavily guarded building in the entire hemisphere. For now they were safe. And she needed to recover. 

"Otdykh." (rest). Bucky reached over and patted her wrist that was laying by her side. Signaling he wasn't going to leave her alone. She took a moment before nodding slightly, her tangled hair falling some more in her face and Bucky could hear the thoughts in the back of his mind she needed a good bath and maybe to ask Natasha in the morning to help clean her up. 

Hellhound laid back on the bed, trying to get comfotable and not succeeding. Bucky knew why she was struggling to fall asleep. They had been used to sleeping in ice or the hard cement floors of cells for too many years. Their body and mind not being able to wrap around the softness of any kind of surface under them so they could sleep. 

Soon she was sleeping though and Bucky was once again left in his own thoughts for too long. Another migraine brewing between his eyes as memories and flashes assualted him out of nowhere. It was a daily occurance that was turning him a bit mad on the inside. It's one thing to forget everything you've ever done. It's another thing entirely to get it all back in a mixed up mess that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

So he sat there, leaning back into the arm chair beside her bed. Arms crossed over his chest and metal hand clenching and unclenching in front of his face. He studied how it folded and moved like a real arm would, and wondered just a bit about how in the hell someone from the 1940's had made a cybernetic arm like this and succesfully attached it to himself... Lost in his thoughts he closed his eyes and easily fell asleep in a light doze. Waiting for a sign of her waking up. 


	13. Chapter 13

Steve knocked tentatively at the door. Not wanting to startle either one of the people he knew to be in the room. The soft thud of heavy boots on the floors signaled someone was coming to the door and Steve waiting patiently as Bucky opened the door. Relaxing immensely when the man realized it was only Steve and no one else. Stepping back Bucky let Steve in and closed the door behind him. 

Motioning for Steve to stay silent Bucky led him into the next room. A living room with just a couch and entertainment center , no t.v and a low coffee table. It was open design mostly, just a low wall that separated the two rooms but with enough of a barrier that they could talk and Bucky could still keep an eye on Hellhound as she slept in the drug induced rest. 

They both sat down heavily on the couch. The large frame just large enough to support their weight and give them room to not elbow each other in the sides if they moved. Both staring at the wall in front of them before Steve softly slapped the two thick folders onto the coffee table in front of Bucky. 

Bucky stared at the yellowed piled of papers with such anger and distaste he nearly threw them across the room. Or wanted to burn them, with a flame thrower, and feed the ashes to Hydra...sighing her took a deep calming breath that didn't exactly work and instead of looking through them looked over at Steve. 

His usualy well kept hair was messy and looked less shiny today than normal, his eyes sunken in a bit from restless nights and worries plaguing him every day. He looked a bit like hell right now and Bucky didn't like it. It reminded him when Steve was always sick, bringing back memories and worries that he hadn't realized weren't uncovered yet. Instead of staying on that and letting his mind wander, Bucky pointed to the folders.

"Are these...?" He pushed the top one over, the one that had his name and picture and experiment number on the front printed in now fading ink. To the one underneath it, the one with her face and experiment numbers on it printed the same way. 

"The full files, the originals. Not the skimpy one Natasha found after the fall of Shield." Bucky looked a bit shaken, and he was on the inside. He thought the mildly full folder that Steve had shown him a few months back had been the extent of his torture and life with Hydra. It looked like a pamphlet compared to this monster of papers and reports. Missions and detailed accounts of experimentation. 

Shuffeling through his own folder, he found full mission reports, target lists, training from day one. Words that were seared into his memory to use as commands to subdue him, times when he had remembered everything and fought again, how many times he had been wiped. The list went on and on. 

His hands were visibly shaking now and Steve didn't quite know what to do. Bucky usualy came out of them by himself, he just needed a minute to collect his scrambled thoughts and calm himself down. So Steve waited, ready to do something, he didn't know what, but anything to help his friend. 

Bucky shook his head roughly, clearing his mind before shifting back through the papers now sprawled all veer the table. The sheer amount of it all astounded him. These weren't one page things, these were mostly hand written accounts in tiny, neat pen and pencil, front to back With notes! Some pages were typed but it was small and no space wasn't used to fill up the reports. Pages and pages of these. Piles of clipped pictures of targets, himself, of him and Hellhound on missions together, and so on. 

He hadn't even looked at her folder yet, couldn't bring himself to just at the moment. So he focused on his. Flashes of memoeries being brought back the longer he looked at these pages and pictures. Images of labs, targets, blood, pain and the chair. All mixing together in his minds eye and he couldn't look at them any more. Jumping up he started to pace the room, something that somewhat calmed him as he cleared his mind again, pushing the onslaught of unwanted images and full on headache back into himself. 

"Easy Buck, we don't have to go over them now." Steve started to get up but thought better of it. Bucky looked like a panther ready to pounce as he paced the living room, his bright blue eyes scanning over the girl's sleeping from every few rounds to make sure she was still sleeping. Still safe. 

He finally stopped and threw his head back, staring at the ceiling and taking a few calming breaths before looking back down and making his way back over to the couch. "I'm fine..it starts to come all at once and I get blindsided..I'm fine punk." Bucky tried to ease some of Steve's uneasiness. He could tell his constant pacing like a madman had upset his friend. 

"If you don't want to go through your folder that's fine, there's no rush Bucky. But maybe...you'd like to know her name?" Steve gestured to the other thick folder, hiding under some notes and pictures that were strewn over the coffee table. 

Bucky swallowed thickly but nodded all the same, he desperately wanted to know her real name. Maybe it would bring back more memories. But the main reason was because he detested calling her by the name Hydra had given her. It meant they still had control over who they were. Shuffling the files and notes back into his own folder he set it aside and slid hers over to in front of him. He was stalling, staring at the stamped russian over the picture glued to the front of the file. 

Steve waited patiently, not wanting to rush the other super soldier. Bucky had acted the same way at his own folder, the first one he brought to him. Slowly, Bucky reached out and flipped open the file folder. It was mostly the same things as his own. Reports, training methods, blood tests and experiments messing with her mutated DNA, mission, target lists and so on. 

Finally he found the paper he was looking for. The first intial report when she was brought in the very first time. He saw the words translate behind his eyes and he had her name on the tip of his tongue. Karolina, scrawled over the page. No last name at all. No record of her anywhere. 

A picture of her face and torso. Chin being held too roughly as she stared wide eyed and terrified at the person holding the camera. Neck and shoulders hidden under a thick woolen sweater covered in dirt. A sign from her struggle against Bucky as he brought her in. 

It started to come back to him. The mission that had him finding her. He remembered some but not the entire ordeal. He had treked through the woods, finding her by complete mistake. Just happened upon her as she was tending to her tiny garden outside the cottage in the middle of the woods. Completely unanware who she was looking at. 

He had raised his gun and fired, finding he was out of ammo. And the moment she saw that gun lift from the man that came out of nowhere, she went on the defensive. Hunching over slightly and baring teeth, no not teeth, fangs, the girl had fangs sprouting from her gums like a wolf. Hands hung loosely at her sides as her nails curved into delicate looking claws. A monster. 

She had lunged for the open door of the cottage. But he was already on her. Being told to dispatch anyone that saw his face or followed him. He wasn't even in his right mind. This was a girl and he was going to kill her just for seeing his masked face. Out of ammo, he lunged and punched her square in the temple. Heard the near crunch of bone as she fell but she passed out. She didn't die after that. 

No ammo and too exhausted from no sleep, little food and a week of missions he had simply carried her back to the pick up point. Explaining in as little words as possible that she saw him, he was out of ammo and she didn't die from the hit. Instead of killing her off, they took her off deep into the labs and that was the last he saw of her. Untill she was Hellhound that is. 

Pulling himself from the images in his mind, Bucky looked over her picture once more. Studying the terrified expression and wide eyes full of fear. She was scared to death. Already she had healed from the blunt punch to her temple, leaving only a tiny yellowing bruise. It couldn't have been taken more then a few hours after they took her and she was healing already. That had to have caught their attention quickly. 

"Karolina..it rings a bell...Caroline...i think i called her Caroline for awhile... Until they gave her a codename." Bucky tried to muddle through the wisps of sounds and names but they were gone before he could grasp them. "Caroline..." His eyes looked over to the sleeping girl and he could see it now. See her in the moments before he had knocked her out in the woods. The innocence in her features before her mutation took over and made her feral. 

"That's good, remembering that..anything else?" Steve asked softly from his right. Bucky wasn't going to tell him just yet how he remembered their first meeting but the hopeful look in Steve's eyes had Bucky spilling everything he could on the subject. Even the small images and bits from missions they had been on together, the ones he could remember. 

For hours, long into the night Steve and Bucky talked about the missing memories, the files, the missions, Caroline, and their youth. Once he saw her picture, the flood from before seemed like a trickle compared to the waves of memories flowing out of his mind now. Like a gate had broken in his mind and was letting loose everythign it could at once. There were still holes, years where either was nothing, most likely being put in the chambers or a severe mind wipe. 

Meanwhile the newly renamed Caroline slept in the next room, lulled into further sleep by the soft voices coming from the two super soldiers in the next room only yards away. Both calming her in a way she wouldn't even remember when she woke up from her dreamless slumber. But she had her name back, and Bucky couldn't feel better about that. Now their goal was to break the conditioning trained into her and maybe teach her english at some point. 


	14. Chapter 14

April 9, 2015

  
Bucky was dreaming, his head rested on his folded arms on the side of Caroline's bed. He had fallen asleep while watching her steady breathing, the fluid now gone from her lungs so she could breath easily now. It was nearly four in the morning when Steve had left to try and get some sleep. Leaving Bucky to his thoughts, the two files and the soft breathing of Caroline as she slept. 

Bucky rarely had real dreams, just nightmares. But this must have been one of the few dreams he was allowed to have. Someone was softly running their fingers through his hair. Something that his mother and sisters would do for him when he was a kid and later when he came home on leave. It was soothing and felt like home, so he had to be dreaming. Only his family had done this to him. And he hadn't felt it since his youth so many years ago. 

Slowly waking up, Bucky found the soft touch didn't stop or falter, it didn't fade from his dreams as he made his way into wakefullness. He was still laying half on Caroline's bed, his vision obscured by her small torso and hips hidden under the blankets he lad laid over her last night. But the fingers didn't stop moving until he turned his head to look up at her. 

Her hand flinched back as if she had been slapped and she craddled her wrist and forearm back to her chest as she saw his head rise up and look at her. She was lucid, not understanding why she was in a bed, hooked up to wires and tubes, or the fact that the soldier was here watching over her. But she took comfort in it, meaning that she wasn't going to be wiped at the moment. 

"Ty Prosnulsya." (youre awake). Bucky wiped the sleep from his eyes and sat up some more, keeping his movementts slow so he wouldn't startle her. But he stayed seated. Seeing that even his movemnts had made her eyes go a bit wider and she sort of curled in on herself a bit. "Ty znayesh' kto ya?" (do you know who I am?). He asked softly. Keeping his voice soft. 

She took a moment to answer him, not understanding the question. He was the Soldier, what's more to it then that. But the tiny nagging in the back of her skull told her to think harder on it. Wiping her hands over her face she closed her eyes and hid behind her palms. Something came to her thoughts but it was gone before she scould get the word out, instead she shook her head at him. 

Bucky sighed softly but smiled up at her. She tried, he could see it in her movements and how her nose had scrunched up when she tried to force an answer out of nowhere. It was a start. They had to start somewhere at least. 

"Oni ne naydut vas, vy iz nikh besplatno," (they won't find you, you're free from them). Bucky spoke again and Caroline's head snapped up to stare at him. Bucky supposed he had the same look on his face once he realized that he was free himself. To make his own choices, to not be used anymore. The sense of overwhemling freedom was crushed from past experience and years of conditioning. Forcing them to think they'd never be free again for the rest of their miserbale lives. 

He let her sit there in her thouguhts. She tenses on the bed, her fingers curling into the sheets and blanket as she waited for a reprimand of some kind. And when none came after several minutes she relaxed minutely. Bucky found her eyes once again locked on his and he nodded slightly, lopsided grin forming a bit on his lips as he watched her try to wrap her head around the notion that she was indeed safe and free. 


	15. Chapter 15

April 9, 2015.   
5:00 pm

She faded back into unconsciousness for several more hours and Bucky watched her sleep. Leaving her side only when Steve begged him to eat something. But he didn't go far, staying in the attached kitchen and peeking out to her sleeping form every few bites of his burger and fries that Steve and Sam brought him. He could feel Steve's worry for him, but Bucky was just too preoccupied at the moment to try and be dissuaded from his worried thoughts. 

They spent the last hour or so going over Caroline's file. To be honest, all three were appalled and disgusted at what the girl had been put through. The medical exams were one thing. Evasive and painful. Taking obscene amounts of blood and giving her nothing to regain her strength, seeing how long it would take her body to refill it's blood cell count. They even cut her head open to look at her brain, while she was awake. 

They didn't know what type of anesthesia to use or how much so they just went to strap her down as tightly as possible and worked on her while she passed out and woke back up repeatedly while under the knife.   
Sam had to excuse himself when Bucky pulled the pictures from a closed envelope of the procedure. Running to the bathroom down the hall before he expelled every bite of food he'd ever had in his life into the toilet. He'd been through some things, seen some gross injuries and bleeding men. Never in his life had he seen the look of utter terror before like in Caroline's eyes from those pictures as doctors sawed open her skull.

Bucky's hands shook with the pictures still clasped in his flesh hand, his metal one already clamping down on the edge of the table so hard he could hear and see the wood splintering under the strength he was trying to hold back. His own file had a similar procedure done on him. But he had, thankfully, been drugged enough after the surgery from the first arm prototype to be out of it and passed out. She wasn't so lucky. 

Glancing back at her peaceful sleeping form he felt anger and rage building up inside of him. How could people do that? Do this to someone who literally meant them no harm? He wanted to rip off every head of Hydra until there was nothing left of anyone who dared called themselves an agent of the damned. 

And Steve, Steve was a tightly coiled ball of rage as he looked away from the files and to Bucky. Their eyes meeting and for a long moment they stared at each other. Neither spoke but it was understood. Whoever behind this would pay, and if they were already in hell they'd send their little underlings to join them. 

Sam stumbled back into the kitchen quietly, chugging from the pop can in front of him and shakily setting the now empty can back down on the table in front of him. His eyes zeroing in on the pictures once more before shuddering and moved his gaze to Steve and Bucky both. 

"Who do we take down first?" He was in. He wanted to take down Hydra earlier. They were bad people with a twisted state of mind that needed to be stopped before more good people were shot down for the sake of their ideals. But this was the straw that broke the camel's back. 

After that, Steve called Natasha in, she needed to be part of this. Once all of them were stationed in the small kitchen in Bucky's rooms they poured over the documents in both files. Writing lists of names, surnames, locations, bases. All of it written down and made into a list of targets to take down. 

Their voices low in case they startled their sleeping guest. And every so often Bucky would need a break, his mind becoming foggier and making him act out a bit when he couldn't remember something important. So he would walk back and slump into the chair by Caroline's bed. Watching her sleep, her even breathing and the soft beep of her heart monitor. It calmed him to know she was here and not out there running from Hydra, or worse still with them. 

"Sergeant Barnes?" Natasha's soft voice came from across the room. Close enough to be heard but not close enough he could swing at her. She knew better already not to startle the man or to wake the sleeping girl.   
He looked up, eyes tired, cheeks a bit hallow. His hair tangled in thick locks atop his head and his chin darkened from not shaving the past few days. Slowly Natasha came over to the other side of the bed. Her gaze flickering over Caroline's small frame, far too thin for her body. Tangled mass of listless blonde hair and hallow cheeks. 

"Would you like me to clean her up? Once she's awake?" Bucky stared at her for a minute before he realized he had in fact stared for far too long at her question. 

"Um yeah actually, I was gonna ask but...kinda got...distracted." He ended and scrubbed his flesh hand over his face, leaning back slightly and grimacing when his back gave an impressive orchestra of snaps and pops. 

Natasha smiled a bit, her lips quirked up slightly as she heard the tiredness in his voice. "Tell me when she wakes up and I'll come help, okay Sergeant?" He grimaced again, not from his body protesting being still for so long. For the fact that being called 'sergeant' made his mind go back to his army days and he wasn't ready for the onslaught of images to come at him so suddenly. 

She started to walk away and Bucky stood up quickly. His words failing him a bit. "She..she doesn't understand english at this point. I'm not sure if it may just be locked in her head or not but she'll only respond to russian right now.." His hand rubbed the back of his neck as he watched Caroline take slow even breaths. 

"YA poluchil etu, soldat" (I've got this , soldier). She smirked at his grin at her flawless russian and turned on her heal to go back into their makeshift ops room. She had forgotten that Barnes didn't know about her home country or native tongue, along with her role in the KGB. She'd keep that to herself for now. 

Looking back down at Caroline, Bucky reached out and brushed a lock of her hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear and smiling softly down at her. His face hardened as he strode back into the kitchen, the Winter Soldier in him coming out into the open as he readied for war. He was gonna fight back this time, and fight till his dying breath. 

"Till the end of the line Buck," Steve said, making Bucky's head snap up and a smirk, a real one, come onto his lips and he clasped Steve's outstretched hand. Pact remade as if the last 70 years had done nothing for their friendship but make it even stronger then before.


	16. Chapter 16

January 9, 2015   
8:00 pm

"Kholodno..." (cold) Caroline's voice broke through the plans the makeshift team were making. Bucky instantly running through Steve and Sam to get to her and kneel down by the bed so she wouldn't wake up with no one around her. Her voice was cracked and raspy and she rubbed her sore throat as her eyes tried and failed to open fully. After a few tries the soft green eyes bore into Bucky's azure ones and she stopped squirming some. 

Steve, Sam and Natasha all hung back. Their experience with crowding Bucky the first time coming to the forefront of their minds and not wanting an entire room to be renovated they stayed in the kitchen, in view but not in the room with Bucky and Caroline. 

She sat up some, her tired muscles protesting but she needed to move, being still for too long was hard on weak muscles and joints. Bucky looked in her eyes and could tell she was here with him. Not stuck in her programming. So he motioned with his free hand for Natasha to come forward, slowly. 

"Davayte vy ochischeny, malen'kiy volk," (let's get you cleaned up little wolf). Bucky went to sit her up more, using his metal arm as a brace. He felt Caroline's back stiffen as Natasha came forward. Arms loose at her side and palms facing outwards a bit to show she wasn't going for a weapon. "Ona drug," (she's a friend). Bucky whispered softly. Caroline didn't relax but she didn't react badly when Natasha took the last few steps toward them and she held out her hand to Caroline. 

They both watched each other closely. And while Caroline's programming told her to question anyone who wasn't her handler, she trusted James. She trusted Zima. He was the only one that showed her any kindness. Looking over into his eyes she watched him smile and nod assuredly. So Caroline reached out a shaking hand and clasped it into Natasha's. Score one for Widow. 

Carefully Bucky picked up Caroline's weak body after seeing she couldn't even stand on her own, and followed Natasha down the hall to his ensuite bath. The assassin started a tub full of warm water. But the second the tap started to run Caroline started to claw her way out of Bucky's grasp, fearing an icebath. 

"Net! Net kholodno!" (no, no cold.) Bucky grasped her tightly, fearing he might break her arms as he pinned her back into his chest and whispered softly into her ear. She quieted down after a moment but wasn't quite convinced until she felt and saw the heat coming from the now steaming bathtub. 

"I got it from here soldier, just sit her down." Bucky watched for a moment as Caroline eyed the assassin and then the bathtub. Not knowing how to voice what she wanted, and she wanted that hot water, badly. Setting her down on the edge of the closed toilet, he brushed her hair from her face kindly. 

"YA budu ryadom s," (i'll be near). With a curt nod to Natasha he stood straight and closed the bathroom door behind him. Leaving the two women alone and hoping and praying to whatever god there was to let Caroline stay herself long enough to realize the other woman meant her no harm. 

Bucky didn't go far at all, leaning his back against the wall adjacent to the closed bathroom door. He didn't listen too closely, just enough to hear if there was a crash or shouting as he let his mind wander back to Caroline. He could remember more here and there. The longer he had stared at her files the more started to come back. 

Like how they made him train her. It came in bits and pieces. Not full memories but things he just... KNEW he had done before. Soft murmurs came from the bathroom, his shoulders tensing before he realized that everything was fine and the women were speaking softly. Well Natasha was talking and Caroline seemed to be listening because he hadn't heard her voice in a bit. 

His phone buzzing in his pocket called his attention. Fishing it out of the back of his jeans Bucky looked at the screen. Still confused at how the contraption worked some days. Modern technology was an alien topic for him. He figured out how to open the text again and read it silently. Letting his back take most of his weight as his legs bent and he sat against the wall. 

-Didn't want to trigger her by accident. Call if you need me Buck.- 

It was Steve's number. Sending back a short, 'okay', Bucky pushed the device back into his pocket and waited silently in the hallway. He hadn't thought about it really, having Steve in his room for so long and not thinking that in fact Steve had been the one to trigger Caroline that first day on the plane. 

Bucky hadn't even realized he'd dozed off until he heard the soft click of the bathroom door being opened from the inside. Quickly getting to his feet he stood at the wall. Waiting for Natasha to open the door further. Being so close to Caroline had made him nervous whenever she was out of his sight. 

She looked so much better. Hair clean and tangle free, gently plaited into a braid that was hanging off her shoulder to end at her stomach. He hadn't realized how long her hair had been. Caroline's skin was much less pale now, with a pinkish hue from the scalding water no doubt. And her face was much less hallow looking, with some pink in her cheeks as well, adding color to her once dirty and blood covered flesh. 

Bucky went to say something but a sharp look from Natasha had him zipping his lips shut and instead reached out to pick Caroline up off the floor. Both of them could see her knees trying to buckle under her weight as she tried to stand and walk on her own. His arms encircled her thin waist and he crouched a bit to swing his metal arm under her knees and sweep her up into his chest. 

For a second a tiny squeak came form her lips but she otherwise stilled. Happy that she hadn't been too startled Bucky walked slowly into the other room again but steered clear of the gurney and instead went right to his bedroom. His mother would come from the grave and smack him silly if she caught him helping a woman into his bed and the thought made a ghost of a smile come from him as he helped her lay down on the bed. 

Leaning up on the pillows Caroline watched curiously as Bucky stood back and looked at her the same way, for different reasons of course. She wanted to know what kind of training this might be, maybe she was being punished and all this would be ripped away if she misbehaved? But Bucky was waiting for her to snap, something to set her off. 

"Otdykh" (rest). Bucky motioned for her to sleep and reluctantly Caroline finally laid down. Caroline's green eyes glancing around and taking Bucky several minutes to convince her there were no threats and she could sleep in peace. Her eyes even glancing over to the Black Widow once before giving in completely, for the moment. 

Natasha left after that. Letting Bucky and Caroline speak softly by themselves as the door closed behind her with a soft click. The assassin wasn't surprised to have found Steve and Sam clearly waiting for her return at the end of the hall where a small lounge around the elevator was set up. Her eyes swept over Steve's face not really able to read what emotion he was feeling strongest at the moment. 

"She's pretty broken...isn't she." Sam's voice sounded softly from the lounge chair where his tall frame was sprawled out, legs extended in front of him, arms crossed across his chest. He didn't really ask, it was a statement they all knew to be true. "Think she'll ever, you know? Come out of it all the way?" His eyes looked over to the red head and Cap across the room. Their eyes enough of an answer for him.


	17. Chapter 17

April 15, 2015

The nightmares had started...

Faceless men in white lab coats and tactical uniforms strolled around a man strapped into a chair. Sparks flying every now and then from the machines hooked to the device locked onto his skull. It's what was making him scream behind a thick chunk of leather shoved between his teeth. His torso and back trying to arch and thrash under the multiple restraints strapping him down onto the chair and machines. It was scrambling his brain like eggs in a iron skillet. his muffled screams and clenched fists shaking with the effort to fight it. He was failing. 

They made her watch...they Made her WATCH! Strapped into the exact replica of the chair the man was on. Her eyes trained and forced to stay open as they made her watch unblinking at the agony of the man in front of her. Hot tears streaming soundlessly down her face as a man spoke to her. She didn't hear a word of it. Her mind and hearing swimming in a white noise that only let in the muffled cries of pain and gasping breath of the man across from her. 

Caroline woke to the sound of her own shattered screaming. Her hands clutching at the thick blanket covering her shaking body. Tears streaming down her face and merely seconds later Bucky came bursting back into the room. Black blade held in his right hand as he scanned around the room.   
She couldn't help the tiny animal like whimper escaping her lips and Caroline tried in vain to get out of bed as quickly as she could. Seeing the soldier had her wanting to run to him. And if she hadn't been so weak in the first place she may have made it without tangling her legs into the sheets and stumbling off the side of the bed. Strong arms caught her before her side hit the floor and placed her back in bed. His flesh hand placing the blade back into a hidden sheath in his jeans as he tried to calm the crying girl that refused to let go of his metal arm. 

He stilled for a moment confused. She was clinging to the one thing that made him a monster like it was her lifeline. Instead of peeling her off of him, fearing he may hurt her, Bucky moved a bit and settled beside her until she started to calm down. 

After a few more minutes he had coaxed her into telling him about the nightmare. Telling her it would make it easier to bare if she talked about it. Her words were choppy and she stopped a lot to rub at the spot at her left temple as if a pain was residing there. It most likely was. Bucky would get a sharp pain in his left temple whenever he tried to remember a strong memory himself. It made sense that she would have a similar thing when she tried it herself. 

Her murmurs of the dreams were shifted from russian to the german and french they had somehow picked up. They didn't remember how they come to know the language in their minds. The different tongues coming out whenever they felt right. Slipping into nothing but the soft whimpers seeping from her damaged throat from her sharp screams. He held her, something he didn't think appropriate but it felt familiar. Like he had done it a hundred thousand times before and was as easy as breathing. She didn't mind either. 

She finally passed out, her body going from trembling and shaking into a relaxed bundle of arms and legs and a tangled mass of yellow hair. He brushed it back from her temple, tucking the lock behind her left ear as his fingers traced over the spot on her hairline where the receptors would have been nearly drilled into her skull. There was no scar, no tissue damage, she was pristine. And he knew, knew, she had went through everything he had and maybe more. It was her ability, before the serum because that obviously hadn't done this to her. Her mutation. That's what Tony was calling it at least. 

She was a feral, a mutant. It explained so much and so little to him. He remembered finding her. She hadn't really put up a fight, she had ran, uncommonly fast, but that had been it. He still caught up with her, still dragged her... Bucky jumped away from the sleeping blonde. His hands running through his hair as he closed his eyes to the guilt washing over him again. He had been so lost to the programming in his mind. He couldn't even fight a simple order and kill her. Because maybe she would have been better off if he had. He'd seen her shot before, shot her himself a time or two because they had wanted to see how fast she could heal from fatal injuries at close and long distance. 

Maybe she would have been better off if he'd shot her. Right between the eyes maybe, snapped the spinal cord for good measure and a few rounds in the brain. That most likely would have stopped her... The sound of plaster and sheet rock busting brought him out of himself. His metal hand gone through the wall just outside his room in the apartment. He stood there. Mind blank for several moments before a soft sound jolted him back fully to this realm and not the hell he was forcing himself into. 

She was sitting up again her arms nothing but skin stretched taut over bones. But he could already see an improvement, a bit more color to her cheeks, a bit more life in her eyes. A bit more muscle regrowing under pale skin that should be naturally tanned and smooth as silk. 

"Zima?" Winter..the only thing he had been called other than the Soldier for decades now, and only by her. Never anyone else. Only her. Her voice soft and heavy with accent, her eyes unblinking at his form just inside the door. Their eyes locked and neither would back down. It wasn't a challenge though. It was a promise to each other. She would try to live, and he would never leave her alone again. 

It should have been unsettling to him. To any man. To have a woman stare, eyes never flinching or straying, not even a twitch to blink. It was just a simple stare, like the cold bite of frost in the alaskan wilds as you come across a den of starving wolves. The ones who are hungry will bite and snap and snarl. The ones starving will watch and pounce. The ones who are past the mindset of hunger. Past the stomach cramps and the will for food. The ones who will slaughter anything and everything in their path to get to their goal. That's what was behind her eyes. Not in this moment no. But it was there, an underlying hint of the animosity hidden within her. She was an animal on the inside . 

"Tishe solntse vam nuzhno otdokhnut." (hush sunshine, you need rest..). He tucked her back in but yet again she raised from her bed with an effort that spoke volumes to how much farther she had to go before she could be who she was before. Her small frail hands grasping onto his metal wrist and refusing to let loose even if he had tried to remove her hold. With a soft smile he nodded and whispered to her softly as he climbed on top of the covers and curled around her protectively, his metal arm wrapped around her tiny waist as he pulled her into his chest. Both of them falling asleep quickly with the familiar feeling of being near each other and somewhat safe.


End file.
